For most executives, that’s a sentence likely to provoke intense anxiety. But for Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow, it was unavoidable.
Speaking at Fortune’s Workforce Innovation Summit on Tuesday, the 31-year-old defended sweeping workforce cuts at Bolt—including a recent layoff affecting roughly 30% of employees—as well as his decision to eliminate the company’s HR team.
“We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn’t exist,” Breslow told Fortune editorial director Kristin Stoller. “Those problems disappeared when I let them go.”
The move may sound drastic, but Breslow said it was a necessary step to resurrect the struggling fintech company he first cofounded in 2014 in his Stanford dorm room.
After soaring to an $11 billion valuation in 2022, employing thousands of workers, Bolt’s fortunes reversed sharply. Breslow stepped down as CEO the same year, and by 2024, the company’s valuation had reportedly fallen to roughly $300 million—a decline of nearly 97%—while multiple rounds of layoffs dramatically reduced its headcount. Breslow attributed the downturn to poor decision-making and overspending.
